Swiss Covid Certificate – Technical documentation of the swiss Covid certificate | Hacker News Reader

Swiss Covid Certificate – Technical documentation of the swiss Covid certificate

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121 pointsshashasha2136 comments

From the G7 agenda reporting:

“ Last Friday morning, during an interview on Good Morning America, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration was taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the United States.

However by Friday afternoon the Department of Homeland Security was clarifying Mayorkas’ statement. The DHS says there won’t be any federal vaccination database nor any mandate that requires people to get a single vaccination credential. It also said there are no plans for anything like a U.S. passport.”

The U.S. is suspicious of many types of documentation. E.g. none needed for voting in many areas, etc. The culture tends towards erring on less bureaucracy.

If more states ban covid-passports, I wonder if the EU would rather not have tourists than allow visitations.

Once there is a vaccine surplus, the vast amount of risk is on those who decide out of their own volition to not get vaccinated, at which point society can’t hold their hands anymore.

Well a COVID pass would still be useful inside the EU, e.g. I can leave the yellow vaccination pass at home, can show it when coming home from outside of the EU or if I go somewhere where a negative test or vaccination is required.

We Swiss people are also quite suspicious with this kind of documentation (Google Fichenaffäre / secret files scandal for reasons). To my understanding you will get this Covid certificate either through vaccination, after having had Covid-19 or after a negative test. So it's not like a central vaccine database or so.

(Note that we had such a database called "Elektronischer Impfausweis" but it had to be taken down after it was found to be a mess in security)

Americans are far more distrustful.

The idea of registering with your local municipality is downright alien in the United States. At best, you're required to eventually update your drivers license when you switch states, which (depending on the state) is the equivalent of "maybe" updating your license and vehicle registration whenever you eventually get around to it.

Compare that against moving between, say, Switzerland and Poland (or any other combination of Schengen member countries).

You actually get heavily fined when you move to Switzerland and use your foreign license for more than a year.

Exchanging it is a small formality in most cases, but you need to do it.

Doesn't that creep you out at least a little bit?

It also - technically - works that way in the US as well when it comes to drivers licenses (although it depends on the state).

The difference is that it's actually enforced in Switzerland, and depending on which country you emigrate in from, you can also be forced to retake your drivers test if you wait long enough (which is something of a less-discussed issue in the expat community).

I think you have to do this basically everywhere? Exception would be within the EU (and possibly within the US, though I thought there were license compatibility problems there).

I'm in the US and don't keep my driver's license up to date.

It's really a minor thing police mention if you get pulled over/into an accident but otherwise doesn't matter.

Not really. I think some people associate driving a car with freedom of movement. I get it, when it's your primary mode of transport, it feels dystopian to have it taken away. Interestingly, I get a similar feeling in places with no/unreliable public transport or in countries where I can't walk through forests, meadows and fields. Not that walking through fields is my primary way of traveling, but it feels reassuring to know I can leave by just walking away (and then catching a bus to get home).

Why should it? It is the same in the EU. We had someone from the us live here with his family for years and he was outraged that he got a fine when driving with his us license after a year.

One of the reasons for not accepting us licenses is that the requirements for getting one are laughable over there

No. Why? Because there is civilian oversight.

Compare this with the US, where if I want to give a proof of address for a phone contract, or a car lease, or anything else. In the US, I need to go to a private, for profit organisation who will send me some mail, and then by receiving this mail I 'prove' that I live at this address. No civilian oversight, in fact they can sell that data to whoever they want

With the Swiss (or German) system, you get a proof of address when you register at your local center. They're also the ones who handle things like marriage certificates, death certificates, etc. And then if they do something with the data that you're unhappy with, you vote in new laws saying what is and isn't acceptable.

Do you actually get heavily fined or does the cop say "you should really get a new license" and let you go on your way (assuming he has no other reason to really screw you)?

My US state would give the most authoritarian parts of Europe a run for their money when it comes to blind worship of and adherence to rules for the sake of rules and on paper you must obtain a license as soon as you become a resident with no grace period. In practice they just want you to drive with a valid license from any state. No part of government really cares about you getting a state license from this state any more than they care about any other law that mostly gets used for power of arbitrary enforcement.

Probably depends on the cop. But chances are quite good that you're fined. Having your paperwork in order has quite a high premium in Switzerland.

I'd say maybe 75% chance of fine. Cops generally don't fuck around here, and sweet talking isn't something that would usually work. The good thing is, under normal circumstances cops never just stop random cars. Another good thing is, I actually like it - same rule for all, male, female, young, old, poor, rich.

If you cross the borders, you either are lucky and pass or when stopped, driver's license is always inspected. In that case expect trouble.

Really not worth the risk.

This thread gives more details: https://www.englishforum.ch/transportation-driving/267870-dr...

I'm surprised that the other commenters make it sound less definitive. In my experience, Swiss authorities are extremely strict when it comes to any sort of driving infraction, so the default expectation should be that you will get fined.

Americans are distrustful, but every birth is registered, nearly everyone gets a license and everyone gets a Social Security Number. Of course, none of these are centralized databases or required to be updated often, so the government knows you exist but doesn’t necessarily know much more than that.

Meanwhile, Google doesn't just know which county you live in, they know the exact GPS location of your home and your office.

Google does not have the power to imprison you or seize your assets. (However their databases are a juicy resource for state functionaries).

Swiss software, like Swiss cheese, seems to come with holes.. security holes

> If more states ban covid-passports, I wonder if the EU would rather not have tourists than allow visitations.

That's certainly a possibility if safety really is a concern. But I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

I don't think that others, who want to travel the world really mind getting the necessary documentation.

The whole principle that you need to prove vaccination to be let into a country is not really new. And there's the yellow vaccine passport issued by the WHO, which exists for decades.

I needed to show proof for a yellow fever vaccination when travelling to Venezuela. And that was in 1989.

> The whole principle that you need to prove vaccination to be let into a country is not really new.

Exactly. Necessary and recommended vaccinations are one of the first things to check when planning a trip to destinations in Africa, South East Asia etc.

In many countries they don't accept kids to nursery without up to date vacinnation card.

They also don’t allow you to collect welfare unless you and your kids have received your vaccinations (Australia).

This is true in the U.S. as well [0]. Some states allow for religious, philosophical, or medical exemptions; these exceptions are similar to the systems implemented in the Netherlands (religious [1]), Australia (philosophical [2]) or Germany (medical [1]).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy_in_the_Unit...

[1]: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057/s41271-019-001...

[2]: https://www.sabin.org/sites/sabin.org/files/restricted/Salmo...

I have travelled South East Asia for several years and never been asked to show any proof.

There are people in the travel community who oppose restrictions, sometimes hyperbolically so. For the last year, travel forums have been full of posts by people who intentionally chose destinations because not only would those country let them in, but mask-wearing and distancing wasn't really enforced there.

With regard to need to prove vaccination, note that the WHO yellow-fever certificate was originally good for 10 years, and recently the WHO announced that it should be good for life. COVID passports are rather different in that they are passed on a QR code, so your certificate could be deemed invalid by your country’s authorities at any time. If you are traveling when that happens, they you might suddenly have to search for whatever new booster vaccine is required for onward travel, which might be a challenge if you are in the developing world.

I have my Covid shots entered into the WHO yellow vaccination passport and assume that's good enough for the time being until a specific "QR code passport" is released.

edited to add: Why should a civilized country just revoke certification once you're fully vaccinated?

When the new apps and digital certificates were announced, being able to revoke certification at any time was touted as one of their major advantages over traditional vaccine certificates. This way, if a new variant arises that preexisting vaccines don’t protect against, or if a state wants to enforce annual booster shots, they can just invalidate older certificates by updating the database entry to which the QR code points.

At least here around I never read that argument. Given that it's initially valid for only 6 month I don't think that's really an issue.

Neither new variants and boosters are reasons for revokation as both are better served by information about the vaccine administered and a timestamp.

if there is a new vaccine required or some follow up procedure or whatever it would make more sense to hand out a new certificate that validates this fact instead of revoking the old one that is actually still perfectly able to validate your previous actions. In fact it might be very beneficial to keep them around to give approval to another step like lets say you will only get that booster shot after you are able to present validation of your vaccination or similar... invalidating these certificates by giving them a date until they are valid is very easy without explicitly revoking certificates.

Same here. I have had to present my Yellow Card before to enter countries, and I will do the same for COVID immunizations.

>Why should a civilized country just revoke certification once you're fully vaccinated?

My assumption was that the revocation facility was there to support the standard PKI revocation use cases.

For instance: subsequent discovery of errors in the database that resulted in issuance of the certificate (we discovered you didn't actually get your second shot), loss of control of a signing key, etc.

Not to get get too conspiratorial, but it looks like the Sinovac vaccine is less effective. As new variants come out, the requirement may not be a Covid vaccine, but a specific Covid vaccine. And that data might come out after you already have your shot so requirements for entry could change real time.

I am in that category. Few months ago I went to Egypt because they do a cheap PCR tests on the border and masks aren't really required there. For my next trip in few months, unless things relax, I am planning to go either to Zanzibar or Mexico. I don't want to bother with these apps, getting certifications, tests, quarantines.

I highly recommend Mexico. Beautiful, affordable, friendly people (especially if you make an effort to speak at least a tiny bit of the language)

> I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

I think this may vary by destination. I have no data (not sure if such data exists) but, anecdotally, living in Ireland, I get the impression that many do travel here at least.

It may be that different destinations hold different draws (& I'm told the Irish-American community has diverged significantly in political leanings compared to Ireland/Europe)

I would love to see a fight between anti and pro covid fanatics.

> That's certainly a possibility if safety really is a concern. But I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

That is incredibly mean-spirited. And exactly what I have come to expect.

I am fully vaccinated: measles, rubella, all the rest.

I will not get the COVID shot.

I never get the annual flu shot, either. I am skeptical of a highly experimental new treatment for a disease that isn't all that lethal.

My body, my choice. If I die, that's my problem.

You go ahead and get the shot. Your body, your choice. If you "trust the science", it'll give you immunity, and you don't need to worry about me at all.

My attitude is mainstream. You just never listen to it, because you'd probably prefer that CNN or the NYT "interpret" it for you.

"If I die, that's my problem." — if it were that easy, I'd be fully on board with you. I am not a fan of being told what I should be doing. In a society (like they say, no man is an island), however, it's not always that clear cut. Once you're infected, the disease does not only affect you and your body. You pass it on to others, you may have an unexpected reaction (which can now be said with quite some certainty, is at the very last the same or worse than whatever the vaccine would do to you) and that reaction means you may use up unexpected resources provided by society. If you live on a farm out in the desert all by yourself, don't need a doctor or hospital, and end up dying or being fine without other people affected, then sure, you do you. That I fully support.

Seeing you post here in HackerNews, I'd guess you'd actually enjoy reading up (and are qualified to understand) on mRNA technology, including the Pfizer "disassembly" for it on GitHub.

In terms of your attitude being mainstream, that'll depend on how many people end up getting the vaccine. That sort of thing tends to change quickly (in both ways).

> You pass it on to others

Those "others" have spent the past five years screaming at me and threatening me.

I stopped caring about or listening to them a long time ago.

> My attitude is mainstream.

> Those "others" have spent the past five years screaming at me and threatening me.

So... you first claim that the mainstream view is yours, and that you won't be vaccinated so assumedly the mainstream won't (even though by the numbers that's clearly not true as 62% of adults already have one shot[1] and that number is sure to continue to grow), but then you claim that the "others" you don't care are the people that apparently don't share your view and you're OK with threatening them. This doesn't make a lot of sense given that the "mainstream" who shares your view will not be vaccinating so those will be the people your actions threaten, not the "others" who have been threatening you and don't share your views, as they will be vaccinated.

Your argument and beliefs aren't making a lot of sense, outside of what appears to be a desire to be in the popular in-group while also simultaneously being contrarian.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine...

Mainstream: I agree. We are reasonable, independent-minded Americans who are rightly skeptical of a highly experimental new..

Ohio couples vaccine jabs with a lottery

Mainstream: Hot damn I like them odds!

Public health workers have known for a long time that low health literacy is a huge problem. People will keep getting into preventable accidents and abusing drugs. All you can do is to make the facts and medical tools widely available to those who want to use them.

> If you "trust the science", it'll give you immunity, and you don't need to worry about me at all.

Me getting vaccinated protects more than just me. It protects, for example, those who cannot get vaccinated by limiting the spread of a disease. Your perspective could be (perhaps slightly unfairly) summarized as 'your child has leukemia and caught a cold from me, well that's THEIR problem not mine'

I do not understand, and refuse to accept, that absurdist shift towards individualism at the expense of all others. It makes no sense, it is often willfully blind to the realities of day to day interaction...and its just mean spirited.

Watching the anti-COVID vaccine folks has helped me realize this isn't about medicine or science or understanding...its about selfishness.

> Watching the anti-COVID vaccine folks has helped me realize this isn't about medicine or science or understanding...its about selfishness.

It really is about science because the vaccines have not been approved for general use yet. All they have is an Emergency Use Authorization.

Edit: Also, we don't know the long-term effects of these vaccines. Those could be far worse than the virus.

For people who are not vulnerable, they shouldn't have to get a vaccine. For people who are, well, we have grocery delivery services. And masks (if they work). And vaccines (if they can get them).

If we lose liberty, then you can bet that we will lose our ability to choose whether to get experimental medical treatments or not. Trust me, you don't want to go down that road.

Do you have an example of said side effects your concerned about? As far as I'm aware most of the vaccine side effects should have popped up by now, and if you're talking long term then we can't possibly know the side effects of any medication because you can always move out the goalpost another decade.

The liberty being discussed here is to go to another country - that's never been an unrestrained freedom you had and up for that other nation to decide, so I don't know why you're concerned about a non-existent liberty.

Long-term side effects don't pop up right away, so no, I can't say what side effects I am worried about. However, I think a decade is about the right amount of time to watch.

I am not talking about a non-existent liberty. I am talking about "my body, my choice." If we decide that taking an experimental vaccine should be necessary for free and unrestricted travel across borders, what's to stop governments from implementing the same thing domestically? Or requiring vaccines to take part in the economy? We already see moves that direction, so I am not talking about a non-existent liberty.

> Long-term side effects don't pop up right away, so no, I can't say what side effects I am worried about. However, I think a decade is about the right amount of time to watch.

So we can expect in 2031 you'll get vaccinated?

> If we decide that taking an experimental vaccine should be necessary for free and unrestricted travel across borders, what's to stop governments from implementing the same thing domestically?

Regarding restriction your movement, as GP states countries have had rules for vaccination during travel for a long time. You have no right to visit another country and countries are free to restrict your freedom of movement within their laws. That's not a liberty you possess, and you're making up scenarios to maximize your potential persecution. Unless that's seriously in discussion, which it's not, it's being dramatic for drama's sake.

I am talking about domestic travel, not international.

During the hysteria, I believe either New York or Rhode Island restricted travel across those state borders, despite such restrictions being explicitly prohibited by the Constitution.

So I am not making up a scenario.

Also, by 2031 (if not already), COVID will be endemic. So no, I probably won't take the vaccine. But taking the vaccine at my age was not a good idea anyway (in my opinion).

Was anyone else talking about domestic travel?

> Also, by 2031 (if not already), COVID will be endemic. So no, I probably won't take the vaccine. But taking the vaccine at my age was not a good idea anyway (in my opinion).

I don't know what age you are, but you must not be talking statistically.

> Was anyone else talking about domestic travel?

No, no one else was talking about domestic travel, but I was. Because it's important to me, and because I can see how it will be lost easily. And it is a liberty that I have.

Also, what about being shut out of the economy? No one was talking about that either, but it's already happening, and I also don't want to lose that.

> I don't know what age you are, but you must not be talking statistically.

I am at an age where I could have kids. There is very little evidence that the vaccines do not affect the ability to have kids. So no, I am not talking statistically, but if I was, 99.97% of the people who get COVID in my age group do just fine. So statistically, the virus isn't very dangerous to me, while the vaccines are unknown. I'll go with the devil I know, thank you very much.

Also, your questions show that you have no good faith interest in engaging in healthy debate and instead wish to make me look bad. So this will be my last message to you. You can have the last word if you want.

> There is very little evidence that the vaccines do not affect the ability to have kids.

That's fine, my last word is simple - you're not assuming the null hypothesis with this. You're creating a list of bad things, for which you have no evidence, and assuming they could be true. In that case it could also very well be the case that somehow it causes benefits in fertility or some other effects. And it seems foolish to worry about the unobserved effects of the vaccine, especially given the huge sample size we currently have, and especially when there is currently research being done, based upon actual observations and not just unfounded conjecture, that COVID may be able to affect fertility.

I guess we're not worried about the long term effect of the virus either? Planning on avoiding getting infected for the next 10y so that we can learn more about it as well?

Especially ironic if it ends up that the virus was escaped from a lab.

There is a chance that I will not get the virus at all.

To quote another thing you said:

> Also, by 2031 (if not already), COVID will be endemic.

Still a chance that I won't get it. Endemic also means that it's constantly mutating, like the flu. I may never get the current strain of COVID-19.

Yeah, but the next strain could be even worse. You seem comfortable playing the odds if you can be passive while doing it instead of making the active choice of getting a vaccination, even if the odds of the worse thing happening is many orders of magnitude greater.

That's because of the Precautionary Principle. Also, as viruses mutate, they tend to get less dangerous.

'it really is about the science'

so what is your education level regarding interpreting vaccine trials data?

it really is about the liberty...which really is about the selfishness...I may disagree with your perspective but my bigger problem is that you won't own it.

There is no data about long term effects, so my education doesn't matter.

Also, focusing on liberty is not selfish. It is a false dichotomy that liberty leads to less safety. In fact, loss of liberty means the loss of different kinds of safety than the virus takes away.

Right now, in the US, we have the safety that the government is not just going to haul us away to reeducation camps if we hold opinions that go against the official narrative. Lose liberty, and that safety is gone.

I focus on liberty because I don't want my posterity, or yours, or anyone's, living in a dystopian dictatorship where they fear for their lives every day.

If you call me selfish because of that, I'll accept that label because you just made it meaningless.

Oh, and I have a college education with statistics and a bit of experience in chemistry research.

> I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

You'd be wrong.

I've received more vaccines than 99.99% of the people you meet. I visit the doctor and get every jab that's recommended before every international trip (along with documentation for my prescriptions in case I'm questioned about them at a border,) but I will not receive any of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines until they are adequately tested. Adequate testing takes about a decade. I'm not really concerned about their efficacy, but anyone who tells you that their long-term safety is already established is lying to you.

Not sure why you are downvoted.

Health officials in US have done a phenomenal job showing how incompetent they were during this crisis. From initial downplay, then the mask fiasco, then trying to covering up the lab leak hypothesis, and of course politicizing the vaccine release timeline, they have blood on their hands. Then to say we need to blindly trust them on what they are saying on safety profile of the vaccine, its completely crazy. And through it all they never said we are sorry.

I will never trust US Health Authorities anymore. Period.

Maybe because saying "Adequate testing takes about a decade" is kinda BS - maybe in poster's opinion that's what "adequate" means. Realistically, the vaccine just has to be safer than getting Covid and it's long-term effects. Because we've seen in most Western nations that not getting Covid doesn't work in general.

> I will never trust US Health Authorities anymore

It's a shame some of their mistakes have eroded trust, and for what it's worth, I think easing masking requirements for vaccinated people was rash. But:

> then trying to covering up the lab leak hypothesis, and of course politicizing the vaccine release timeline, they have blood on their hands.

Come on. With all due respect, the lab leak hypothesis does not change the fact Covid exists now and we all have to deal with it, and I'm not even sure what "politicizing the vaccine release timeline" even means, or how a vaccine rollout better than Europe (so far) means they have blood on their hands. There is for sure some politics involved, which can be seen between the different approaches between the administrations. But that just points to factors outside health officials.

So what about other countries then? Are they equally untrustworthy? And with all the vaccinations given so far, the safety profile of some vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech) seems very good (compared to AZ, which is still not bad). At this point, data exists on the short term effects and blind trust is not necessary. On the long term, who knows? But you'd be in the same boat as millions of other people if there were wide-spread effects. If not, then it'd be like cancer or car accidents. Shit does sometimes happen, and often it's out of our control.

If we don't know the long-term effects of the vaccines, we don't know if they are actually better than COVID and its long-term effects.

Don't forget Covid/SARS-Cov-2 is only 6 months older than the vaccines: Nov-2019 vs Apr-2020.

Every bit of data that we have today about the safety profile of the vaccines vs Covid indicates that for the majority of people vaccines are orders of magnitude (think 100-10000x) safer than Covid.

Even when they aren't, e.g. children or AZ & young women, we are talking about super small risks similar to an average car ride.

People consider risk emotionally. A Facebook post claiming their uncle’s roommate’s sister died of a JNJ blot clot (1 in a million) gets more eyeballs than yesterday’s hundreds of COVID-19 fatalities (hundreds of times the risk!)

No, there are data that says that the vaccines may be the same as COVID, or worse because the virus is not that dangerous for young people.

I’m not a betting man but a one in a million chance of dying of a Jannsen shot looks good in comparison with COVID-19’s 300 per million(1). Lightning is about 0.3 million. Driving or riding a car is 100 per million.

(1)Death rate much higher in hotspots after hospitals are overwhelmed.

I'm not a betting man, but it looks like the chance of dying from the shot might actually be higher than 1 in a million. And we don't yet know how high it is, nor will we, I suspect.

that's true, but also not useful if you're dead.

luckily, there are a few vaccines to choose from, and we do understand how the vaccines work in general. but if you don't trust mRNA vaccines, adenovirus vaccines are very well understood.

Well, don't take it from me. Take it from Hopkins:

> A typical vaccine development timeline takes 5 to 10 years, and sometimes longer

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/timeline

Or how about from New York State?

> The creation of a vaccine involves scientists and medical experts from around the world, and it usually requires 10 to 15 years of research

https://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/immunization/vaccine_sa...

Or the World Economic Forum?

> In total, a vaccine can take more than 10 years to fully develop

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/vaccine-development-b...

mRNA technology doesn't eliminate the need for lengthy safety testing. It only decreases the amount of time between initial brainstorming and sticking needles in test subjects. The need to follow those subjects for years to monitor them for negative outcomes doesn't change.

> With all due respect, the lab leak hypothesis does not change the fact Covid exists now

It would though, in Jan 2020. When it was almost equivalent to xenophobia. When everyone was told travel was no biggie. And everyone should hang in NYC because the preparedness is so high. What does it say about those experts who espoused these bs? I remember Anthony Fauci publicly saying in news conference there is no way this is a lab leak and it has to be a natural virus. If a year later now it seems the were not being honest to public (intentionally or not), what makes you think a year from now they won't reverse course on vaccine?

> how a vaccine rollout better than Europe (so far) means they have blood on their hands.

You don't think US wouldn't have a better response if this was not an election year in 2020? I remember the tone around vaccine suddenly changing post election from "I will use it when Drs say it is safe" to "if you don't take vaccine you are a bigot".

> the safety profile of some vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech) seems very good (compared to AZ, which is still not bad)

Sure "seems good", it is like saying safety profile of this code I am going to be using in production that will be tested on billions of people "seems fine" so let's go ahead and if anything happens we will be on the "same boat as millions of other people" as you said.

My hypothesis around this is this - countries that have been successful the most in controlling the virus i.e. China have the lowest vaccination number too. So what makes you think we are smarter than them when we did an awful job managing the virus?

> Shit does sometimes happen, and often it's out of our control.

This is the point though. Shit happened and it was within our control. There were multiple mis-steps from health officials and media from the get go with outright downplay to being completely wrong (about masks and other things) and politicizing. And there were no recourse. No introspection. No apologies. The NYC health commissioner who said their preparedness was very high is still there. No one had any accountability.

Hell there are still 700+ people dying in US everyday, do you hear those CNN panelists outraged about those deaths? No, we have moved on. It's all about channeling the narrative. The political war has been won and that''s all that mattered in an election year. People's lives were secondary.

And we still are supposed to trust blindly the same group of people?

There were big mistakes but attributing malice and rejecting experts is just jumping out of the pan and into the fire.

As someone who has my yellow vaccine passport from the WHO because I travel to South America, I disagree with this sentiment. I view this move by the EU more akin to TSA than the yellow fever vaccine. I believe it will turn into strictly an annoyance to travelers. The premise of TSA was straightforward response to a bad thing that occurred and turned into a useless beast and these programs appear to have the same fingerprints. For example, what is different now than before when we didn't require proof of seasonal flu shot (or any vaccine for that matter)? Are we admitting this was a mistake? If so, then why just COVID? Add MMR, DTaP, and seasonal flu to the list. Is this a temporary program until COVID-19 is sufficiently vaccinated against? If so, why is this not the first thing mentioned? What about new variants of the disease? Will we need booster shots every year? If so, then we've already significantly diverged from the yellow fever program. If this is only COVID-19, then why even bother with the program? Inevitably, I believe the program will turn into TSA and have scope creep and will never get abolished. They will continue explaining the need for their existence to keep their jobs at the detriment to only travelers. The only way I could get behind any such program is a clear end date written into law.

MMR TDaP smallpox polio vaccines have been so successful that people don’t worry about these fearsome diseases. An ironic victim of their own success.

That would seem like it's a stereotype for a reason, but at the beginning of all this mess, we had plenty of tourists (Ireland) who .. weren't malicious about it, they just ran on the assumption that restrictions were for everyone else. Like they're special, and obviously it's okay for them to bend the rules, as long as everyone else isn't.

I've read of plenty of people visiting Iceland recently, where it's essentially test at the border then shelter in place until you get your results. And people quite happily listing off the spots they visited on their way to their hotel to shelter in place for the evening. And to be frank, Iceland does seem to be as accommodating as possible while understandably protective of their near-zero rates. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to reciprocate by acting as a guest should.

I don't want to sound overly critical, but it's not just the rabid fanatics. I do get the impression plenty of perfectly reasonable American tourists believe they're a special case.

> The whole principle that you need to prove vaccination to be let into a country is not really new.

Requiring this for experimental and not-yet-approved vaccines is new. (The COVID vaccines only have Emergency Use Authorizations.)

You can still get in with a negative test even if no passports are recognized between EU / US. Getting tested maybe annoying for sure, but it's part of the scheme going to Switzerland, and presumably to EU also.

I think everything depends how long the covid is issue to the hospitals of the destination country. If the vaccines are very potent, as it looks like from in Israel, then it might be that most of Europe & US can already travel freely without passports at the end of year.

British Colombia is wary of them on the basis of inequity, which is not unreasonable, that said, they may be doing something for international travel.

The Swiss thing looks kinda complicated, and likely hard for other countries to participate.

Easy Solution: issue a passport insert + seal.

Go to the hospital/clinic, show your passport, they give you a seal, a stamp, a number, and a signature.

The number can be typed into a computer to match with last name and first initial so border people can check.

The insert can be some kind of things that's hard to fake + the stamp would be required.

Alternatively - you take a doctor's note down to the DMV and they issue you a little temp/card/id with your name and photo.

So there's a 'central standard' but no overarching bureaucracy.

It‘s basically a PKI and this design was chosen with the explicit goal to participate in the EU Green Pass project with the goal that all EU members can participate in the same system.

When the the system stands the only bureaucracy will be for an issuer to get a cert from the authority or for an authority to be included in the root.

All the things you describe with the seal and number and system to validate is just as much if not more bureaucracy and is not that far off from the proposed solution.

The difference is there's no hard dependency on centralized authority or any kind of complex web or mobile technologies.

IT is complicated. Many orgs are still running ridiculous old systems. A lot of people don't have mobiles phones, or generally don't know how to use them properly, may not have data services or even an email address. The 'COVID tracer' app issued by gov. Canada has barely anyone using it.

TN visas (NAFTA visas for US/Can/Mexico) are obtained at the border, it's just something stapled into your passport. That's it. And that entitles you to live in a foreign country. We could feasibly do the same with COVID tags.

It's really hard to set up government agencies that operate effectively with all the bells and whistles, it's costly, tons of consultants, tons of service calls & support ... by leveraging the DMV or it's equivalent, you already have most of the infrastructure in place: they know how to check and issue IDs, they have processes for appointments, service calls, queuing, putting out support content that meets standards (i.e. disabled, elderly), actual phone numbers and physical people to speak to for those who are used to that. For the same reason bank tellers still exist.

We used to do some amazingly complicated things without IT.

But your suggestion still involves a hard dependency on a centralised authority. Someone needs to issue the paper form, issue the stamp, make sure every agency knows what is "genuine", issue a "number" to be written on the paper, create a centralised system where that number and your ID is linked and stored so the border people can check the validity of the number, you need to procure all of these physical goods and send them to the locations. AND they have to somehow then make sure that any other country can take that paper and somehow validate that it's actually genuine as well, maybe call a phone number on the paper and ask?

I honestly don't understand how any of this is simpler, less centralised and a benefit to the end user.

If you have a web browser, a printer and know how to copy paste you can issue a pass. The system returns a pdf you can print and hand to the person. No mobile phone, data service or email involved. This can happen at the same place where you get your vaccination.

For the end user and the intermediary at the issuance place it's exactly the same, you get vaccinated, someone enters it into a form, you get a paper to take with you. With the benefit that if I wanted I could get it on my phone and someone in Spain or Sweden or wherever would be able to validate it in a second.

The UK has also ruled it out. I wouldn't use one - emigrate or never travel. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/30/uk-vaccine-p...

The UK has ruled it out as a solution for large local events and cultural activities, they haven't ruled out vaccine passports in general.

As far as I can tell they're still very much planned for inbound international travel to the UK, and they're already in use for outbound international travel - the NHS app is accepted as proof of vaccination status at the border when entering quite a few countries e.g. Greece https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/greece/entry-requir...

Have you never travelled to a vaccination mandatory country where you needed to prove vaccination against e.g. Yellow fever?

I would, er, plan on getting very used to wherever you are now, then. I'd assume most countries will require some sort of documentation on this.

EU internally will use the so-called covid green pass however being vaccinated will not be a condition for travelling: https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...

I think the same logic will apply for visits from rest of the world.

> If more states ban covid-passports, I wonder if the EU would rather not have tourists than allow visitations.

I assume people coming from non-vaccine-passport countries will require additional documentation (ie they'll have to prove vaccination, just not in a standardized way)

I think the cat is out of the bag for the US at this point. My understanding is many (most?) states did not require ID and you could provide any name you wanted.

The vaccine cards are easily faked so at this point, what proof so people have they got the vaccine? If you got it at Kaiser or UCSF it’s probably in your records, but beyond that?

I’m guessing that people will need to get a vaccine antigen test to prove immunogenicity and then get that officially certified.

> The U.S. is suspicious of many types of documentation. E.g. none needed for voting in many areas, etc. The culture tends towards erring on less bureaucracy.

I used to respect that viewpoint - but, honestly, I can't take it seriously anymore after we learned first of NSA mass surveillance and then of the loaded discussion about voter fraud and the byzantine voter registration procedures.

The US is still drawing up a specter from the cold war era while ignoring that those danger never materialized when national IDs where actually issued - and while actively developing tech that is far more invasive than a simple ID.

I think by now, introducing a federal ID could even help the fight against racism: If there was a single federal ID that was easily obtainable for any US citizen, that would remove the need for all the different and in part discriminatory registration systems, while still allowing voter fraud concerns to be addressed.

This will be same for the European Union Green Certificate (DGC): https://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/covid-19_en

The German app and implentation will be on GitHub too: https://github.com/Digitaler-Impfnachweis

It has been renamed to DCC now :-)

The apps and integration server are here: https://github.com/eu-digital-green-certificates

The schema and business rules are here: https://github.com/ehn-digital-green-development

Come join us if you're interested in taking a look, it's quite interesting :)

The inoculation certificate validity is currently 180 days since the last jab (looking at the slide deck in the repo). That seems super short. Will people really need 2 courses of jabs each year (that is 4 jabs with most current vaccines)?

Nobody knows for sure at this point but the prospects for long-term vaccine-derived immunity look really good so probably not.

They pretty much have to keep this short. Anything more permanent and you open up the risk of "alternative" databases being build by nefarious third parties.

How does a short lifetime of the certs help with 3rd parties building these databases you mention?

Once the certificate becomes obsolete, it becomes useless and therefore needs to be reacquired. Same process with American SSNs, if they were depreciated very 6 months getting yours published wouldn’t be an issue.

But one of these passes is nearly worthless (in the sense of impersonation) if you don't also have a valid ID of the person it got issued to and you look the same.

When my vaccination pass would "leak" then my name & birthdate would be leaked and they would know someone of that name and birthdate got vaccinated but other than that, they can't impersonate me as if they presented the pass they would be asked to show the corresponding ID as well.

The danger is not the pass itself. It's that you'd be prompted to display it systematically for any and all activities.

No. The federal council has stated in multiple press conferences that the 6 month period is solely because we only have good data about vaccine protection for this time period. Studies are still ongoing and if it turns out the vaccine protects people well after this period, it will be adjusted. The 6 monthsbare just preliminary.

Pardon my French, but that's a completely ass-backwards approach from the council. If we later find that the vaccines need boosters, so be it, maybe that's justification for an additional restriction. There's an argument against this (of the "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" variety[1]), but what's proposed is taking a mile and promising to maybe sometime walk some of it back at some point. How far? In response to whose data? The ongoing debate around the "lab leak" hypothesis should have you asking questions about how information is collected and decisions made, _particularly_ at the science/public policy boundary.

[1]: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/covid-4-9-another-va... - Scroll down to/Ctrl-F for: "Or, you could raise the more generalized version of this objection. Also from the comments:"

In Swiss culture, dependability is valued a lot. People prefer to know for sure that they are guaranteed to be exempt from quarantine restrictions for at least six months (which may be extended indefinitely down the road), over the alternative of assuring indefinite immunity right away and then curtailing that in case the vaccines do not offer long-term protection.

It gives people a certain peace of mind and allows them to make travel plans with confidence.

New York's was 90 days, then 180, then a year. They've been extending it as the data from the early clinical trial cohorts age.

The New York one is different in that it’s just an assertion of good/not good based on NY’s standards.

The EU model is a little different as there is a whole laundry list of data.

Seems complex for something that probably never going to see any real use.

It's supposed to go live next Monday / by the end of the month. We'll see.

Let's just say im very skeptical when it comes to IT-projects of the Swiss government. They regularly waste 100s of millions of CHF on stuff that simply doesn't work.

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releas...

It's already live in Greece (I just issued mine). The current government has taken the national bureaucracy from the stone age to the space age in something like three years. We used to have to go to the various services' offices to get whatever certificates we needed, then around a decade ago another government created dedicated physical services for certificates, validation and other such daily work.

This government has created a website where all certificate issuance and most other government-related business is fully electronic, I kind of can't believe they've done such a good job for such a backwards country. I'm amazed.

I've been super impressed with the way your government has worked on this. They're awesome! We've had our app out for a couple of months now (based on tests). They've started a lot later but have been able to launch sooner (I believe that they're the first ones to go live).

Yeah, that bit is quite impressive! I also like how they handle international matters and diplomacy, but there are a few areas where their policies haven't been great. They're a conservative party, so they haven't handled things like police brutality, corruption, etc well.

The framework and broad specification came from the EU through their EU Green Pass project so we have at least reduced fuck-up risk ;)

I was sceptical if they manage to actually deliver as fast as they promised especially as the EU guidelines and specs were were general/rough just a month ago.

You do have a point there. The EU is pitching COVID certificates as a way to restore travel in the bloc, but I can’t imagine they will be used in places other than airports/bus stations/train stations.

The issue is that maintaining roadblocks along Schengen borders has incurred costs that countries don’t like to deal with long-term, and even with the roadblocks there have been a lot of gaps. I spent last summer cycling across Europe. I was fortunate in that all borders on my route were open, but I met a load of other cyclists who had crossed various Schengen borders illegally, because no one was checking traffic along some minor road through the fields.

So, for people with their own transportation, you might manage an entire European summer holiday without anyone ever checking your COVID certificate.

Denmark use a similar app called “Coronapas”. Works similar to the Swiss one, displaying latest test results and vaccine status. It’s currently required to enter any restaurants or public spaces and has been very successful in returning some degree of normality to the country. Singapore are trialing a similar solution where the “Trace Together” app displays my vaccine status, possible exposure as well as test results. Very efficient. Different countries, different traditions. The US seems quite opposed to federally enforcing vaccine registration and passports, yet they find it ok to conduct mass surveillance of its citizens (and foreigners). On the contrary, Germany have strict privacy laws; yet they push for digital vaccine passports.

Denmark is an outlier among EU countries in using an app for internal travel and activities. Many other EU countries have already reopened their restaurant sector without requiring any proof of vaccination.

"It’s currently required to enter any restaurants or public spaces and has been very successful in returning some degree of normality to the country.", there seems to be a link between the app and the normality in this statement, but there actually is no link between the two: an app like this may have some impact at some longer term, to lighten another wave, but it doesn't have any effect on the current re-openings.

I don’t really follow your logic.

The Danish strategy is to test a lot of people and catch new cases early.

Requiring a green corona passport when entering various establishments where transmission can happen, is both a way to decrease the chance of transmission in these places, and to force more people to get tested, to hopefully catch asymptomatic people before they infect too many other people.

The logic is that it's not the reason for reopening, nor its success: it will be successful in a few months if there is no next wave, or if it is not as high as some other places where such a thing will not be in place.

The reopening is possible because of previous actions, and its result will only be seen in a few months.

We are using IDEMIX to enable the DCC and COVID testing to be used all over the country. This allows us to only disclose a tiny amount of information - in many cases just one of your initials an either your month or day of birth - whilst proving yourself to be low-risk for COVID.

The DCC itself contains a lot of information so it shouldn't be directly used outside of border or police checks. I can - technically - be used as the basis for issuing of Verified Credentials by other parties. For example by airports - with the privacy protected by their privacy policy.

Whether the law allows that is another question.. and IANAL..

[Disclaimer: I work on the Dutch COVID apps and am deeply involved with Digital Green on EU level].

While the technology you are developing may allow that proof of COVID status, as the OP mentions, it is questionable if it will actually be used broadly in many countries. When countries have already reopened their hospitality sectors to all regardless of status, then they may be loathe to begin requiring COVID proof. Nor do hospitality staff necessarily want to given the duty of checking statuses.

So if COVID status proof is required country-internally over the coming months, in many countries it will probably be used for mass events (e.g. the UNTOLD festival in Romania) but otherwise not.

It's more about "nudging" people towards getting vaccinated from my stand point. That's how we get through this pandemic.

I do strongly hope that the entire system will no longer be required come the end of 2021, or this time next year at the latest.

For the Exposure Notification apps the same thing applies.

> something that probably never going to see any real use

Loads of venues and events in New York are requiring an Excelsior pass. Some will allow persons with out-of-state IDs in with paperwork inspection, but that’s a slower line.

Interesting. I'm not in NYC, so I haven't seen this. Upstate so far it just seems vaccination status is only affecting masking requirements and no one is actually checking.

I recently did a write up [1] of the Lithuanian vaccine certificate after finding a flaw on it.

What impressed me was that the verification was done fully offline in a privacy preserving way

[1] https://tadas.varanauskas.lt/posts/forging-lithuanian-vaccin...

Whereas the technological aspect and questions are very interesting, this certificate has the sole purpose to divide the people.

I am devastated to see this coming.

Will there be an international format for vaccine certificates or are border controls expected to implement every certificate format for every issuing country for incoming travellers?

I am from Switzerland and I would like to be certified to be free of anxiety disorder regarding Covid.

Absolutely terrible for privacy to use a client-server architecture for this.

Why can't this be purely client-validated like passport chips?

,,COVID Certificate is the official app for storing and presenting COVID certificates issued in Switzerland. The certificates are kept and checked locally on the user's phone.''

It seems like the server is needed for getting / revoking certificates, not for the verification.

> Why can't this be purely client-validated like passport chips?

From the diagram this looks similar.

The client-server is to fetch the certs and revocations, and handle the signing infrastructure.

It‘s as distributed & offline as can be.

You could easily print the QR code out and the validator can be offline; the validation still works fine. The validator should have to connect to the network periodically to check for revocations, otherwise everything can be done offline.

Issuance, Revocations & cross country validation requires some kind of backbone but even issuers don‘t have to be centralized if you want. The only thing you need is to get an issuer cert from that central trust authority and you can start issuing passes that are valid.

Currently it still requires a government ID in addition to the pass so it‘s even more „offline“. The specs have room to enable eID solutions though but that will probably be online only as the verifiers will need to be specific for every provider.

Why do you need revocations of vaccine status? Can you become unvaxed?

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